A total of 10 coastal and waterway clean-up events ran from October 12th to November 10th around the Townsville area as part of the 2018 ReefBlitz!

Events took place at Aplin’s Weir, Apex Park and Southern Port Road along the Ross River as well as Shelly Cove, Rowe’s Bay and Pallarenda Beach, Balgal Beach just north of the city, plus Nelly, Alma, Geoffrey, Florence and Horseshoe Bays over at Magnetic Island.

Across these sites, collaboration amongst partners and the local community engaged 130 participants that recovered a total of 280 kilograms of discarded litter and marine debris over just 5 days from Townsville’s and Magnetic Island’s coastline, helping protect local marine habitats and nursery grounds of the green sea turtle population, the rare dugong, shark species and migrating whales.

ReefBlitz is an annual month-long series of events, which has been running for five years, engaging the community in citizen science and on-ground local action that contributes to reef health and resilience. Data has been recorded on the litter and marine debris that was collected, contributing to the 14-year-old Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) Database.